Partition limits in Ubuntu

by default only 4 'primary' partitions can be created on any hard-drive running any opperating system, you can however create 'extended' partitions that lets you have as many as you wish.

if you are partitioning with 'gparted' (also known as the gnome partition editor) you should get a window such as this when you create a new partition:
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee221/HJMills1388/addNewPartition.png

you should change the Create as drop down box to 'extended' when creating the partitions

That looks like it, but it stops me from getting what, maybe six partitions? I end up with several reasonably sized, and one huge partition. <i> "by default only 4 'primary' partitions can be created on any hard-drive running any operating system" <i> Not so, with XP I can partition my hard drives as I want.

no its the way hard-drives work. xp just hiding the fact that it is using extended partitions. the way extended partitions work is you create one large primary partition then put smaller extended partitions inside it. back in the old days it was never even dremt of that someone might want more than 4 partitions (or even that a hard-drive could have so much space that more than four would be possible), its just something left over from that.

Okay, so there are only 4 partitions allotted...nonetheless, what steps do I need to take to create additional partitions, and can I name them in Ubuntu?

You can create you base partition, then add a single extended and make more partitions within the extended partition, and yes you can set the names of mount points in ubuntu using gparted.